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Pancreatic cancer is rare but often deadly

Faye Collins has successfully battled pancreatic cancer which is usually considered one of the most deadly forms of the disease. (Zach Long/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

Mary Hackney

Faye Collins was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2002, and has been fighting its spread to her liver since 2007.

It’s a uphill battle, but Collins stays positive, drawing support from her family and her church.

Compared with many pancreatic cancer patients, Collins is fortunate. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States. On average, those diagnosed with the disease have about a year to live.

It was a stabbing pain in her abdomen that awoke Collins, 85, to her disease one night.

“It felt awful,” the Lamesa resident said. “I felt like I was on fire.”

She was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

While 75 percent of patients have adenocarcinoma, Collins was diagnosed with acinar cell carcinoma, which is rare, but less deadly than other types, doctors believe. Collins had surgery, six weeks of chemotherapy, and radiation, she said.

The cancer in her pancreas was gone, but it cropped up in her liver — first in 2007 and then again this year.

The location of Collins’ pancreatic tumor — on the “tail” of her pancreas and away from blood vessels in the organ’s head — made surgery an option for Collins, said Ibrahim Shalaby, a medical oncologist with Covenant’s Joe Arrington Cancer Center, who is Collins’ doctor.

Mary Hackney, who died of pancreatic cancer in September, wasn’t so lucky, her daughter Kristen said.

Like Collins, Hackney was tested for pancreatic cancer after a sharp pain in her abdomen caused her to double over in pain this April, Kristen Hackney-Redman said.

The then-64-year-old had been feeling sick, but doctors attributed it to her diabetes medications. When she started losing weight, Hackney thought her efforts to control the diabetes were paying off.

By the time she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the mother of three would never shake it. Even with chemotherapy, she had less than a year to live, doctors told her.

This year, about 43,140 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 36,800 will die, the National Cancer Institute reports.

While fairly uncommon, the cancer is often deadly because many people don’t know they have it while surgery is still an option. If the tumor grows around important blood vessels supplying the bowel, it becomes inoperable, Shalaby said.

The average survival rate for a patient diagnosed with stage IIB pancreatic cancer — the most common stage at diagnosis — is just 12.7 months, the American Joint Committee on Cancer reports.

While most people experience no

signs in the early stages, the symptoms might include jaundice, unexplained weight loss and abdominal pain, Shalaby said.

Risk factors include genetic factors — the disease runs in families — as well as smoking, obesity, and diabetes, Shalaby said.

Despite the devastating impact the disease has on families, a medical breakthrough is unlikely to help patients any time soon, said Hackney-Redman, who worries about her own young children’s predisposition to the disease.

“You may think everybody is working on a cure, but they’re not — they don’t have the money,” Hackney-Redman said.

Without earlier detection and better treatment options, the disease is devastating to families, Hackney-Redman said. She is supporting two proposed Congressional bills, together called the Pancreatic Cancer Research and Education Act.

“Three weeks ... a few days ... that’s how quickly people die from it,” Hackney-Redman said.

Her mother didn’t have a chance, she remembered.

Collins, who has been fighting her cancer for eight years, stays positive with help from her sons, grandchildren and friends at Lamesa’s First Presbyterian Church.

“You have to have a positive attitude or it can really get you down,” she said.